Thursday, March 5, 2015

Tomnod Enlisted To Help Find Missing CAT

Durban - The crowd sourcing site, Tomnod, has been enlisted in the search for a missing Catamaran and her three member crew.

Getting Ready For Sail

Anthony Murray, Reg Robertson and Jarvd Payne set sail on a Sunsail C044-978 catamaran from Cape Town Harbour on December 14th, 2014. On January 18th, the crew made contact via satellite telephone. The most recent ETA places the Catamaran due in Phuket Thailand by the 2nd of February. As each day ticks down, friends and family have grown increasingly more concerned.

Finally, the families enlisted the crowd sourcing company, Tomnod, to take satellite photos of the possible search area. Anyone with access to the internet can take a shot at finding the veritable needle in the haystack. If the boat is still up, anyone might make a lucky find that will bring the crew back to their loved ones.

Anthony Murray, 58, is the skipper of the Leopard 44. Murray is well known as a skipper with over 25 years experience at sea. Reg Robertson, 59, also has extensive experience. For youth and strength, the two experienced sea salts brought along 20 year old Jaryd Payne. All three men are from South Africa.

You can see the four Leopard Catamarans on the bottom of this photo. They may not be as clear or in this scale on the Tomnod photos. The crew may be in the liferaft, as well.

Tomnod, a division of Digiital Globe, is a private company which provides satellite images of natural disasters and for some missing yacht cases. Satellite images are prohibitively expensive so getting the images through Digital Globe provides an immense cost savings to the search team. The images can then be searched using the Tomnod program. Tagging a potential find is very easy.

Of course, finding the missing sailors is urgent because the sea is a harsh environment. Still, long term survival stories abound from sailors who have managed extensive periods, more than a year, on a disabled yacht.

Hello Everyone - Thank you for your continued support and searchingTomnod with us. Just to clarify as many of you are asking about details regarding the LIFE RAFT: Our men have a 12 man life raft, 3.0m wide and hexagonal (6 sided) with a day-glow orange canopy. KEEP TAGGING! YOU'RE DOING GREAT!"

Have not read all the posts yet, but do we know the content of their last call on 18 Jan ... I managed to trace weather pattern to 20 Jan in the vicinity - To the family, this is obviously a terrible time for you, but just to let you know to not give up hope - when we were in the Tuamotu Archipelago the authorities there at the time told us they found a man adrift at sea - he had been adrift for 16 months. The weather shows 51 knots which is a lot but easily doable on a new catamaran - perhaps dis-masted and drifting. I see too from the weather that if they were trying to angle south to get away from a cyclone in the vicinity that they would have had to drop well to the south as the winds otherwise would have been on their bow. Of course MRCC and all the folks will be considering this - but it would be nice to know what conversations took place in the last days of contact at sea

There is hope - they have a life raft - we will keep posting to our mates out there all the info possible - already we are being told by sailors they are 'on the look out'.Tomnod was instrumental in the search for the SV Nina which disappeared in the Tasman

Matthew Thomas - I would certainly want you heading up a search if we got lost!

Tomnod was instrumental in the Nina search which disappeared after being battered by a fierce storm. on June 4th, 2013. Unfortunately, nothing of the Nina has ever been found despite 16,000 people who signed up for Tomnod to help complete the search.

When the missing Leopard catamaran failed to up make port on schedule, the family notified Maritime Rescue Co-.ordination Center(MRCC) in Cape Town, South Africa.